The New Year

While the calendar sets January as the beginning of the year, Bailey designates spring, and April more specifically, especially for the farmer, as the beginning of the year. Bailey also evokes a sensory landscape of the spring season and refreshed soil.

medical literature. If we are mistaken in our assumption, then only our readers can correct us.
After three years it has been decided to discontinue the Industrial Health series. This is done because we believe that many of the aspects of this speciality which are of general interest have been adequately covered. An extension of the series would inevitably lead to the inclusion of papers of a particular interest to a restricted number of people. In place of the Industrial Health articles a new series entitled' The Significance of Clinical Manifestations in Childhood' appears. This series is under editorship of a member of our editorial board, DR. c. W. KESSON. The aim is to present a discussion of the significance of some common symptoms or physical signs in childhood. The first in this series is ' Convulsions in Childhood' which appears in this issue. Other papers which win appear in the course of 1959 deal with vomiting, jaundice, diarrhoea, blindness, haemorrhages, deafness and so on.
These are, then, the sum total of the changes in our Journal. We hope that in this New Year our established readers will continue to derive pleasure and enjoyment from our pages and that new readers win find that an hour with this Journal is one well spent.
Highlights from the Literature GERMANY H. J esserer (1958) has reported his experience of dihydrotachysterol a in the treatment of parathyroid insufficiency.
It was shown that dihydrotachysterol a was as effective as dihydrotachsterol2 at similar dose levels.
The clinical data were collected in 40 patients treated with the various preparations over periods of several months. Whether the results will differ when patients are treated for many years, as is necessary in many cases of chronic parathyroid insufficiency, would not yet be predicted. Steinbrecher (1958) reports two patients (aged over 70 years) with Parkinson's disease on the basis of cerebral arteriosclerosis who developed signs of disorientation, nocturnal restlessness, and visual hallucinations after several weeks of' Akineton " a piperidinepropanol derivative (one received up to 10 mg. daily, the other up to 6 mg. daily). The described signs disappeared within a few days of the drug being discontinued. As a result of these observations it is suggested that patients with parkinsonism and evidence of cerebral vascular disease should be hospitalized when first placed on ' Akineton '.
* * * * * According to published reports, the incidence of puerperal mastitis is everywhere on the increase: it is estimated to occur in 3-14 per cent of hospital deliveries, probably because Staph. aureus haemoiyticUS, the main causative micro-organism, has become established in most lying-in hospitals. The route of infection is from the nose and throat of the nursing staff, via the nasal and pharyngeal passages of the infant to the mother's breast. The use of antibioticS for prophylactic purposes, practised in some maternity wards, is deprecated because it involves the risk of the emergence of bacterial resistance. Instead, preventive measures should aim at eliminating the bacteria by disinfection, particularly in buildings which house both maternal wards and neonatal wards.

CHINA
Huang Ting-K'un, Kung Lan-Sheng and N. }{. Koang (1958) studied the eosinophilic responses in II cases of myocardial infarction and 4 cases of angina pectoris. Two of the patients with myocardial infarction were originally admitted for repeated attacks of angina pectoris but developed acute myocardial infarction during hospitalization. The authors were able to observe the eosinophilic changes during both types of attack in the same patient. The results indicated that in myocardial infarction, the eosinophils responded by a pronounced drop to IO/CU. mm. or less within 24 hours of the attack, and remained at